|
|
|
|
||
|
(Published
in NewMedia February 10, 1998 Contents) Power Mac G3 Apple's New Chips Best Intel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
By Jeff Sauer .gif)
|
A turbulent 1997 for the Mac closed with an upswing as Apple released third-generation (G3) PowerPC systems. Although clock speeds are initially 233MHz and 266MHz, system performance jumps well ahead of the fastest 604e- and 603-based systems and even tops 300MHz Pentium IIs in many operations.
G3 is Apple's moniker for Motorola's PowerPC 750 chip, originally shown by Motorola behind closed doors at Macworld Boston in August 1997. Motorola's departure from the Mac clone business left its 750-based StarMax unreleased and the public waiting for Apple's own systems. They arrived in November 1997 in three different packages: a desktop (7300 form factor), a minitower (8600 form factor), and even a PowerBook. The PowerBook is possible since the G3 uses much less power than second-generation chips, effectively ending the portability vs. performance trade-off on the Mac side (Pentium IIs draw too much power for use in portables).
While the G3 is the fastest PowerPC yet, the processor itself is only part of the equation. A new motherboard design, internally dubbed Gossamer, features a 66MHz system bus 30 percent faster than older 50MHz logic boards. Those slower bus speeds, which dictate how fast data moves to the processor from system memory and devices, were the bane of the never-released 500MHz Exponential processors. Without a speedy system architecture, fast processors just wait for data.
G3 clock speeds are nowhere near 500MHz yet; nonetheless, the combination of a faster system bus and more efficient processing adds up to an impressive speed jump. And the 66MHz system bus leaves plenty of headroom for faster clock speeds in 1998.
The G3 also benefits from improvements to the L2 cache, now situated on the backside of the processor module with its own 116MHz or 133MHz bus. Half the speed of the processor is fast enough for most operations since the processor often needs multiple cycles to process blocks of data. Unfortunately for high-end power users, early Gossamer systems have only a nonexpandable 512KB L2 cache. Bigger caches will have to wait for the 9600-class G3 machines expected in spring 1998.
Like the 8600, Gossamer features three PCI expansion slots and three memory slots, one of which comes with a 32MB SDRAM module. That limits total RAM of these early systems to 384MB, though Apple's use of newer SDRAM makes system memory faster than with older DIMMS. The G3 minitower also uses the same easy-access hinged enclosure as the 8600.
Apple's G3 systems have prices as revolutionary as the chips. Desktop G3s start at just $1,999 with 32MB RAM and a 4GB EIDE hard drive. Minitowers start at $2,449 with the same basic configuration.
To achieve those prices, Apple has followed the lead of its former clone vendors by using high-volume peripherals like an EIDE hard drive and ATAPI 24X CD-ROM. SCSI is still built in, though Apple's continuing use of 5MBps 25-pin SCSI should encourage power users to add an Ultra Wide SCSI accelerator card. A Zip drive, modem, and 10BaseT Ethernet are options. In the minitower, opting for the Zip leaves just one available internal drive bay.
Built-in ATI 3D Rage II graphics with 2MB SGRAM supports true color up to 832-by-624 and 1600-by-1200 8-bit color and is expandable to 6MB. Built-in audio in the basic minitower configuration can be upgraded to an AV option that offers video capture up to 30fps at 320-by-240 for $175. Our tests showed no dropped frames when compressing video on the fly with the QuickTime Video compressor, but a few frames were dropped when capturing uncompressed video at data rates over 4MBps, likely due to the limitations of the EIDE drive. With an Ultra SCSI card and drive, uncompressed capture was perfect. But for most Web and CD-ROM applications, compressed 320-by-240 video is more than adequate.
We benchmarked the G3 266MHz minitower against a 9600/233 using many of the same tests as in 1997's Mac clone comparison ("Rating the Mac Workstations: All Clones Are Not Created Equal," June 23, 1997). We also matched Photoshop and Premiere results against those from a Gateway 2000 300MHz Pentium II machine.
In our Photoshop tests, the G3 was consistently 20 percent to 25 percent faster than the 9600 and twice as fast in Gaussian Blur (we allocated 80MB to the application, and used an 18MB image file). The G3's backside cache and faster system bus are the likely reasons, since Gaussian Blur involved heavy memory swapping. However, the Pentium II still slightly beat the G3 in this operation as well as the Photoshop open test. In other Photoshop tests, the G3 bested Intel, though not overwhelmingly.
Our Premiere "Make Movie" test, which tests disk I/O as well as processing power, was revealing. The G3 solidly beat the 9600/233, again by a good 25 percent and beat the Gateway by about 7 percent, but it didn't match Power Computing's top results from almost a year ago using a fast SCSI drive and bus.
On the other hand, Media Cleaner "Make Movie" results were excellent. Unlike Premiere, which accesses multiple files for transitions and effects, Media Cleaner processes only one QuickTime file at a time and thus was able to yield results some 30 percent faster than the 9600. 3D rendering using Strata Studio Pro's Radiosity matched the 25 percent speed increases of our other tests.
Strong performance and competitive pricing make Apple's G3 systems extremely attractive, even compared to Intel. If you already have an external disk array or AV storage system, by all means buy a G3 system or upgrade now. If you don't, however, you should probably wait for the top
end (9600-class) systems with more slots, bays, cache, and faster built
in hard drives coming in spring 1998.
Apple Computer (408) 996-1010
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
home contents extras hyperstand search i•serv ? |
